The latest Seton Hall Guantanamo Report

I have heard of this name before, Seton Hall, but I hadn't actually read any of the reports from them until I saw this article on Huffington Post this morning. It makes me hope that the Obama administration starts getting more serious about this thing (or, at least more vocal about it) and that it comes to a swift end. This is the sort of thing that makes me embarrassed for my country.

HuffPo Article Link - by Scott Horton
Seton Hall Guantanamo Reports Link - There are now 11 reports out, but several other things linked on their site.

Quote

On the night of June 9-10 in 2006, three prisoners held at the Guantánamo prison's Camp Delta died under mysterious circumstances. Military authorities responded by quickly ordering media representatives off the island and blocking lawyers from meeting with their clients. The first official military statements declared the deaths not just suicides -- but actually went so far as to describe them as acts of "asymmetrical warfare" against the United States.

Now a 58-page study prepared by law faculty and students at Seton Hall University in New Jersey starkly challenges the Pentagon's claims. It notes serious and unresolved contradictions within a Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) report -- which was publicly released only in fragmentary form, two years after the fact -- and declares the military's internal investigation an obvious cover-up. The only question is: of what?

Law Professor Mark Denbeaux, who directed the study, said in an interview that "there are two possibilities here. Either the investigation is a cover-up of gross dereliction of duty, or it is a cover-up of something far more chilling. More than three years later we do not know what really happened." (Read a Q&A with Denbeaux: "'The Most Innocent Explanation Is That This Is Gitmo Meets Lord Of The Flies'".)

The new study exposes how the NCIS report purports that all three prisoners on the prison's Alpha Block did the following to commit suicide:

• Braided a noose by tearing up their sheets and/or clothing.
• Made mannequins of themselves so it would appear to the guards they were asleep in their cells.
• Hung sheets to block the view into the cells.
• Stuffed rags down their own throats well past a point which would have induced involuntary gagging.
• Tied their own feet together.
• Tied their own hands together.
• Hung the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall and/or ceiling.
• Climbed up on to the sink, put the noose around their necks and release their weight, resulting in death by strangulation.

The study also notes that there has never been any explanation of how the three bodies could have hung in the cells, undiscovered, for at least two hours, when the cells were supposed to be under constant supervision by roving guards and video cameras.

Disturbingly, these facts were collected within the NCIS report -- but without discussion or any effort to make conclusions based on them. Was that because the facts did not fit the conclusions that military leaders had already offered the public and that the investigators were therefore struggling to support -- namely that the prisoners committed suicide? It is not even clear that it would be physically possible for the prisoners to commit suicide consistent with these facts.

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Thoughts?
Anyone read more of these reports?
Anyone seen or heard more information on the administrations efforts to close the prison?

EDIT: For those who like to derail threads here is an explanation of my links: I am 100% aware that HuffPo has a rather extreme liberal bias, which is exactly why I included the name of the author of the piece (so you can do your own research there) AND (pay attention here) the PRIMARY SOURCE.

It all sounds pretty fishy, but this is the part that really tickled my BS detector:

Quote

The new study exposes how the NCIS report purports that all three prisoners on the prison's Alpha Block did the following to commit suicide:

• Braided a noose by tearing up their sheets and/or clothing.
• Made mannequins of themselves so it would appear to the guards they were asleep in their cells.
• Hung sheets to block the view into the cells.
• Stuffed rags down their own throats well past a point which would have induced involuntary gagging.
• Tied their own feet together.
• Tied their own hands together.
• Hung the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall and/or ceiling.
• Climbed up on to the sink, put the noose around their necks and release their weight, resulting in death by strangulation.

Click to expand...

The Navy actually says they did this to themselves? Not without some kind of "help," I suspect.

Just curious, who commissioned Seton Hall to do this study? I'm wondering if it was the government or the military.

When it comes to courts and the legal system in general, the military has always had its own set of rules, more or less - and this makes it sound like they're taking advantage of that fact. I'd like to know more about this.

Just curious, who commissioned Seton Hall to do this study? I'm wondering if it was the government or the military.

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Neither, as I understand it.

From wikipedia

Quote

Seton Hall report refers to several studies into the handling of detainees taken to Guantánamo Bay done by professor Mark P. Denbeaux of the Seton Hall University School of Law, and some of his law students.[1]

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